This blog is my attempt to document our busy but BLESSED lives raising and educating our children for His glory. A child of God, wife to one, and mom to 6 fabulous kids. We are in our 15th year of homeschooling using a Classical ~ Literature based approach.

Come along for the good, the bad & the ugly.



Thursday, June 2, 2016

Essential Skills Advantage: Complete Home Learning Suite ~ a TOS review


With the school year winding down for most of us it’s important to not fall into the dreadful “summer slide”. You know, when your children somehow forget everything you have taught them for the last 180 days and they stare blankly at you with big round eyes at the beginning of next school year. Yes, because I don’t want to experience that in our household, especially for my younger girls, we have been enjoying  practicing math and science concepts using the Complete  Home Learning Suite from Essential Skills Advantage.

Essential Skills Advantage {ESA} is an online educational program designed for students Kindergarten through 6th grade. As a small team their mission is to change the face of education by providing every child with the confidence to pursue their own dreams along with the necessary skills to do so. Does your child have any weak areas? I know mine do and with the help of ESA we can focus on reading, spelling, grammar and language, geography, math or science any day of the week.

We received an online yearly subscription to ESA’s online Complete Home Learning Suite for two children and I have been using this programs thousands of skill-building exercises with Montana, 9 year old 3rd grader, and McKenzie, a 6 year old Kindergartner for the last six weeks. It fits the bill for us because they are visual, auditory and tactile learners.






The Complete Home Learning Suite includes access to the follow subjects:
Reading ~ Phonics and reading comprehension, K-6th
Spelling ~ Fun with Spelling and Spelling Stumpers, 1st-6th
Language & Grammar ~ Writing fundamentals, grammar, creative writing, and vocabulary builder, 3rd-6th
Math ~ Complete math, operations, and concepts, K-6th
Geography ~ Map and globe skills, World, American, and Canadian Geography, 3rd-5th
Science ~ Earth & Space, Life, and Physical science topics, K-3rd

Essential Skills Advantage ReviewEssential Skills Advantage Review
Essential Skills Advantage ReviewEssential Skills Advantage Review

Since ESA is completely self-paced, your student can choose what subject and level they want to work at. This is especially helpful if you need to do a little “backpedaling” and relearn a concept. Feedback is immediately given which is helpful for reinforcement and progression. As the parent you can log in and see your child’s progress too and guide them in selecting activities to complete.
Essential Skills Advantage Review

For McKenzie, she spent most of her time within the math and reading sections. She was able to work independently during her computer/quiet time. She normally spent 30-40 minutes working or until she got tired almost daily. I never had any complaints from her though, and she frequently asked to do ESA first after her calendar and Bible work. We did dabble a little bit in the science portion, but she needed me by her side to complete the activities. I definitely saw improvement in her overall reading and math. She enjoys doing math, so at times I had to say that she had to complete at least 15-20 minutes of reading activities also. Still no complaints from her and we would just set the timer and she would go about her lessons.

Essential Skills Advantage Review

Montana on the other hand was not as compliant, which is no fault of this program! She is my child who likes to do what she can to get done with school as soon as possible, especially if she is not interested in the subject. But, we are learning and working on that each day and having a good attitude about it. So once again, I would set the timer for 15-20 minutes for her to complete lessons. She tended to stay in the Life Science area working with the animals, but I made sure to add variety to her computer time by adding spelling and math activities to her schedule.



Overall, Complete Home Learning Suite is a great online educational program! We give it two thumbs up and encourage you to look into it to avoid that dreadful summer slide I mentioned earlier. But you know what? It’s not just for summer slide, this program works great all year around! We will continue to use ESA daily during the summer and I will be sure to schedule it onto our schedules during our traditional school year at least 3 days a week. I am especially excited to really dive into this program during our gymnastics travel season. I always feel like we don’t get “enough” done as far a learning during those 3-4 months, even though we do, and this will be great addition for road schooling times.

Be sure to check out what my CrewMates thought of Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential Skills Advantage by clicking the banner below to read their viewpoints.

Essential Skills Advantage Review

Price ~ $69.99 a year for 1 student, each additional student is $.99 per month
Ages ~ K-6th graders

Essential Skills Advantage Review

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